


honey bee theorem

by closingdoors



Series: The P.P. Phone Series [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Multiverse, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), idk anything about the canon comic multiverse - this is unrelated, sort of a drabble?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 14:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19021414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closingdoors/pseuds/closingdoors
Summary: "What if there's a universe where he's still alive?" Peter asks, his voice cracking on the last word.Inspired by the Far From Home trailer.





	honey bee theorem

No equation can calculate the people you could have loved.

**Honey Bee Theorem, Laura Villareal**

 

 

 

"I've been trying to enjoy my vacation. I really have," Peter insists, his voice slightly tinny through the phone. It's the sort of thing she would've asked Tony to fix. "Fury kinda kidnapped me out of nowhere." 

Pepper settles into her chair, smiling even though the kid can't see her. "Yes. He does that." 

Peter goes silent for a moment. The pauses he takes are always thoughtful. She remembers him as a bumbling, eager-to-please teenager when Tony had first introduced the two of them. Now, after everything, it's like he's weighing his words before he says them. Like treading eggshells around her. She both hates and understands it, because truthfully, she behaves the same way around him now, too.

Not that she has a lot of input in Peter Parker's life. No, that'd always been on Tony, and now Happy's trying to fill that ridiculously large shoe. She's taken a step back, living her life out here with Morgan, visiting the city a handful of times a month to make sure that Stark Industries doesn't fall apart. She's learned to stop and smell the roses. 

But he calls sometimes, and she's always ready to listen to what he has to say. They never talk about Tony, and it hurts and it doesn't, and sometimes she wonders if she's doing the right thing, listening to him. He asks after Morgan and talks about school and sometimes, briefly, he'll list his good Spider-Man deeds of the day. Some people would see this as a good sign. Pepper understands that, most of the time, it's not really  _her_ he's talking to.

"Mr Beck's from another universe. Like, a parallel universe, almost. Multiverse. If you know what that is. Of course you do, I just..." 

He trails off, and she stirs her tea.

"Is that so," she says, keeping her voice neutral.

What she doesn't say is that she knows about the theory of the multiverse, because it's exactly the sort of thing Tony had been desperate to find.

Life after half the population had been turned to ash hadn't been easy for any of them, and it had been almost impossible for Tony, sitting atop his pile of grief. She had helped eased the pain as much as she could, but there'd been so much of Tony that'd been inaccessible. Perhaps even to himself. The loss of Peter had been devastating. He'd spend night after night feverishly trying to discover the multiverse, desperate to find a version where Peter had survived, and it hadn't been until Morgan was born that he'd learned to process the grief instead of side-step it.

"Do you think..." 

His voice wobbles. She cushions her cheek in her palm. 

"Go on," she says softly.

"What if there's one where he's still alive?" Peter asks, his voice cracking on the last word.

Pepper takes a careful, silent breath, willing away the traitorous tears that appear. 

It isn't the first time she's thought about it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In one version, he survives. Face crackly and burned and right arm gone. Tired and aching, but alive, and hers.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In another, he doesn't make it home from Afghanistan. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In the most forgiving world, Iron Man is never born at all. He never earns a chest full of shrapnel. They're simply Tony and Pepper; CEO and assistant. It's enough.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In the cruelest world, they never meet. Tony doesn't make a mistake in his math. She grows bored and unfulfilled in her accounting role. Eventually she leaves the company for bigger and brighter things. She sees his name plastered across the front page one day, and mentions to a coworker that she used to work for his company, but pays no attention to the story inside. He dies after Obadiah Stane steals the RT from his chest.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

She hopes there's a thousand versions where Steve says sorry.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In this story, he puts it in a lockbox and drops it in the middle of the lake. He learns how to be selfish.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Maybe the universe would even be outlandish enough to give him a world where Howard Stark loved him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In a hopeful world, he tells her he's dying from palladium poisoning. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In a universe of Tony's nightmares, he flies a nuke into space, and doesn't make it back. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In the worst of her nightmares, he and Bruce go to Vormir. Tony doesn't make it back. She's robbed of a goodbye, and Thanos wins anyway.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In another universe, they kiss on a rooftop.

Or — in another, they don't.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

There's a world that robs them of Morgan. She only thinks about it once.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Somehow there's a version where Strange doesn't interrupt them in Central Park. Tony pays a little more attention to the wedding planning. They marry with only the possibility of threat looming above them. He forgets about it all when he sees her in her wedding dress. Nobody dies.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In one they don't beat the odds, and her body rejects Extremis. She falls two hundred feet. Her bones shatter on impact and then her body explodes, vicious and raw, a millisecond of unbearable, agonising pain. Tony drowns himself in the Hudson two months later.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She often dreams about a world where Peter survived the snap. He lives with them and Morgan and every anniversary they pay homage to his aunt and the friends he'd lost. They're mostly happy.

 

 

* * *

 

 

In the world he'd want most of all, Maria Stark survives the car crash.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There's a world out there where Thanos had never existed at all. She's sure of it. Tony successfully creates world peace. The Avengers are never formed in the first place. She and Tony step into love readily, and there are no curses and demons, only them.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In a cruel twist of fate, there's a world where she doesn't survive the snap, and she's born again to watch him die.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In a fair world, Steve wields the gauntlet. He's buried beside Peggy Carter. Tony retires.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Maybe there's a world that had simply been kind to him. That's what he'd deserved. A little kindness.

It's this world she hopes for most of all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In every universe, she loves him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Ms Potts?" 

Pepper blinks herself out of her reverie. She carefully palms her tears away, sniffing quietly so that Peter won't hear. 

"I'm sorry," she replies, voice steadier than she feels. "I lost myself for a moment there." 

It's a slip-up. A little too much. A glimpse into the grief she's determined to keep hidden from him. The silence on Peter's end this time isn't thoughtful, but sad. She hears him sniff and she knows he's crying too. Pepper sighs. 

"Maybe there is, kid. Maybe he's alive somewhere and really, really happy." 

There's rustling on the other end. She wonders about him, about where he is, who's with him, whether he'll ever have anyone to lean on other than the people who were directly in the fallout zone. He needs a little outsider's perspective, she thinks. Someone to be to him what she likes to believe she'd been to Tony. A safe place. A place to rest.

"You think so?" Peter asks, voice quiet and small. 

Pepper's not really sure she believes in anything at all anymore. She knows what she hopes, but hoping isn't the same thing as believing.

She had believed in Tony until the very end, though. Maybe that's the same thing as faith. She'd found happiness in his strength, his perseverance. She'd found a husband, even when the world was falling apart, even when he was falling apart, too. She'd found everything she'd been looking for right in front of her, in a man made of iron. 

So maybe there is no fate and no kismet. No divine intervention. Maybe Tony died and the world carried on. But she'd believed in him, still does, and he died to save this universe, and she thinks that has to mean something.

"Yeah, kid," she replies eventually, and watches as outside the sun begins to rise, painting the sky in a shock of oranges and reds, "I think so." 

 

 


End file.
